Costs of owning a 10-20 year old Mercedes-Benz as a family car
While this site focuses on the older cars I own and drive daily, none of these cars are the primary family car. Since August of 2016, my wife has been driving a 2007 Mercedes-Benz E350 S211 wagon. This has been the primary family car until October of this year. During that time, the car covered around 88,500km over 9.3 years. It has now been replaced by a 2012 Mercedes-Benz E350 S212 wagon.
The focus of this article is on the costs to own this car and if it was a good financial decision or not. There are a few reasons why we chose this path.
- My wife desires a car she doesn’t have to care much about. She obviously wants it to be reliable and safe, but the idea is that having to care about if it gets a scratch or a knock on it, or if the wheels get curbed is stress she doesn’t need. It should be possible to drive it wherever she wants, park it wherever she wants and transport anything inside it, without having to worry. In her mind, a new car would be ‘obnoxious’ because she would need to care about these things.
- Both of us have an aversion to leasing cars or borrowing money on a depreciating asset.
What this meant was buying a nice car that had some of the technology that my wife desired at a price where we didn’t care about it very much. The E350 wagon fit this bill. It was a nice car that we could treat as fully depreciated.
Depreciation
In August of 2016, we paid $18,000 for the car. I just sold it for $6,000, so the wear and tear / depreciation cost over the time was $12,000. That was slightly better than our expectation when we purchased it.
Petrol Costs
Over the 88,500km, we used 12,076l of Petrol, either 95 or 98. Around town, the E350 did around 15l/100km, and on the highway around 10l/100km. This cost $20,494.76. The petrol costs were also in line with our expectations. While the E350 is not a particularly fuel efficient car by current standards, it was pretty good for its time. Our usage was around 80% city / 20% highway. City trips were mostly very short.
Service Costs
At the time of purchase, I did a lot of research on the models. I specifically purchased this car because it was outside the known range of the Balancer shaft issue that plagues the M272 engine. I’ve since learned that this known range of engines is a load of nonsense. I know of at least three cars that have failed balancer shafts outside this range. What appears to happen is that the shafts just fail later, but they still fail. Ours became apparent at about 175,000km. My theory is that they went to an improved part after that range, as the earlier cars were failing much sooner. The ‘improved’ part still failed, just later.
The M272 engine is also known for the plastic rods for the intake manifold flaps failing. This is another fundamental design issue with these engines. The combined cost of repairs related to things I regard as basic design flaws was over $10,000 and about a third of the total maintenance bill for the car.
Over the whole period, we spent around $33,000 for maintenance on the car. If you exclude the two large issues related to design flaws, this would have been around $20,000. I feel that $20,000 is reasonable, but $33,000 is not.
Insurance and Registration
Insurance and registration is expensive in NSW. The actual registration fee is around $650 per year, plus green slip of around $650. Insurance was around $1600 this year, putting the current annual figure around $3,000.
Generally insurance rates have been out of control in Australia over the duration of owning this car, and the total cost of registration and insurance was $22,000.
Totals
- Kilometers Driven: 88,489
- Petrol: $20,500
- Servicing: $33,000
- Depreciation: $12,000
- Registration: $12,000
- Insurance: $10,500
- Total Spend: $87,500
- Per Year: $9,500
- Per Kilometer: 99c
In looking at these numbers, most people are very focused on the fuel consumption of their vehicle. However, when you look at the actual numbers, in this case it’s less than a quarter of the ownership costs.
Taking out costs related to fundamental design flaws, the total spend per year goes down to $8,300 and 87c per kilometer.
Alternatives
What could we have done instead? At the time I ruled out a Series 1 S211, due to the troublesome SBC brakes. Had I known about the balancer shaft affecting cars outside the known range, I would have looked at a series 1 E320 wagon. The engine in those cars is bulletproof and the SBC brakes are much cheaper to fix. Or buying a 2005/2006 Series 2 car where the balancer shaft failed earlier and already been done.
Obviously, a Mercedes-Benz was not the only option. At the time we looked at two other alternatives. A Toyota Tarago or Honda Odyssey of similar vintage. I think the main difference for going with either of those options would have been the $10-12,000 in design flaws inherent in the M272 engine. So probably similar to a Series 1 S211. My wife didn’t like the sheer size of the Tarago to drive, nor its lack of ‘mod cons’. The Odyssey used such thin cheap leather, most cars that were 10 years old already looked like somebody had a knife fight in the interior.
An alternative we didn’t consider was buying new. A new Kia Carnival would have been about $55,000 on the road at the time. At the time, they were offering a 7 year warranty, which would have protected us from major issues like balancer shafts. We still would have needed to pay for servicing, tyres, battery etc. If I assume this was $1,000 per year, that saves $24,000 in maintenance. Had done this, I would now be selling that car for around $15,000, so the depreciation would have been $40,000. Petrol and registration would have been similar, but Insurance slightly more. Either way I would have been $16,000 worse off and been driving a car larger than some hotel rooms I’ve stayed in.
Conclusion
I don’t regret the S211. Its been a very good family car. What I do regret is relying on the ‘known range’ service bulletin for the Balancer shaft problem. I think a Series 1 car would have cost $3,000 less at the time, and cost $10,000 less in maintenance. The purchase price savings alone would have paid for an SBC unit.
For the replacement of the S211, we’ve got for a M276 naturally aspirated S212 wagon. According to my research, this should get around all the design flaws in some of the alternatives.
